An experimental overview on electric field sensing

Abstract

Electric fields exist everywhere. They are influenced by living beings, conductive materials, and other charged entities. Electric field sensing is a passive capacitive measurement technique that detects changes in electric fields and has a very low power consumption. We explore potential applications of this technology and compare it to other measurement approaches, such as active capacitive sensing. Five prototypes have been created that give an overview of the potential use cases and how they compare to other technologies. Our results reveal that electric field sensing can be used for indoor applications as well as outdoor applications. Even a mobile usage is possible due to the low energy consumption of this technology.